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In a Widening News Desert on the Border, a Tabloid Start-Up Defies the Odds
People in Del Rio, Texas, complain that nothing ever happens there. Those are fighting words for the publisher of The 830 Times, though he admits that keeping his paper afloat might be the biggest news of all.
DEL RIO, Texas — At the Chihuahuan Desert’s eastern limits, in a parking lot above Lake Amistad, Brian Argabright photographed anglers and their catch at the Border Bass Battle for The Del Rio News-Herald, a chronicler of the wind-swept border town since 1884.
Three days later, he would learn the tournament story would be his last for The News-Herald.
On Nov. 18, the nationwide newspaper crisis touched Val Verde County when The News-Herald printed its final edition. The end was swift for the staff and a shock to residents, who had somehow expected their newspaper to last forever.
Leonard Woolsey, president of Southern Newspapers Inc., the corporation that owns The News-Herald, came to Del Rio to fire 10 employees. For him, it was the right thing to do it in person. Revenue could not cover payroll, even after the company secured a multimillion-dollar federal Covid-19 relief loan.
The closure left Val Verde County without a trusted newspaper, another victim in a trend researchers at the University of North Carolina deemed “The Expanding News Desert.” An estimated 300 newspapers have closed and 6,000 journalists have lost their jobs over the past two years, according to their research, as circulation fell by five million readers.
In Texas, 134 counties — a little more than half the state — have just one newspaper, and 21 have no newspaper at all. Del Rio, the Vale Verde County seat, teetered on becoming the 22nd.
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